23 THINGS ABOUT ME
1. I grew up in Charlotte, Tennessee in the house beside the water tower. Population 500 at the time. The town, not our house. Charlotte got its first traffic light when I was a kid, and we had the honor to be the first family to have a wreck there.
2. My senior class song was Free Bird.
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3. When I was 17, I entered and won a dance contest with a date at the Cain Sloan Teen Board premiere party for the movie Grease at their downtown store. Among the judges was a member of the Pink Ladies and a member of the T-birds. Our prizes were 25 albums and a wardrobe of Segfield jeans.
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4. About ten years later I entered and won another dance contest at an Ingram Video party in Nashville for the movie Hairspray (the good one with Rikki Lake). The judge was John Waters. The girl I did the dirty boogie with worked with me and also had a part time job as a mud wrestler at a night club. I then retired from professional dancing after that triumph.
5. My ten favorite songs are Love Train by the O'Jays, I’ll Take you There by the Staple Singers, Do I Do by Stevie Wonder, Everlasting Love by The Love Affair, Fancy by Reba McEntire, Ode to Billy Joe by Bobbie Gentry, Precious and Few by Climax, Breakout by Swingout Sister, Corner of the Sky from Pippin by John Rubenstein, and Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls.
6. I produced a music video for Robert Earl Keen's Merry Christmas from The Family. It is to the best of my knowledge the first music video ever produced to promote a book. You can also see it on YouTube.
7. My favorite books are Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton, Modern Baptists by James Wilcox, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I’m also a huge fan of Richard Russo, Stephen McCauley, and the late Larry Brown.
8. The first time I ever saw one of my books in someone’s home who wasn’t a family member, it was being used under a table to keep it from wobbling. That will humble you.
9. My first car was a 72 VW Beatle. You had to change gears, but it didn't have a clutch. I totaled it late one night after work outside the World's End. I had to go in there and use the phone to call my parents. It was my first time inside a gay bar.
10. The first new car I ever bought was a LeCar. I ended up selling it for scrap like five years later for about $50.
11. I am color blind.
12. I have traveled on publicity tours with both Dawn Wells and Ann B. Davis. Both are as nice as you would hope they would be.
13. At dinner at Sardi’s in New York with Ann B. Davis after she had done Conan O'Brien, we both ate pork chops and applesauce. No lie.
14. The name of my company Dance Floor Books comes from a line in a book I developed--I Hope You Dance. The line says something to the effect that if you want to accomplish anything in life you can't sit on the sidelines--you have to get on the dance floor.
15. Several years ago, my 93 year old aunt left her almost as old husband and her purse in a running car while she "ran" into the hospital she volunteered at. Some guy stole her husband, purse, and car. He drove the car a couple of miles away and left the husband and the car. He took the purse.
16. I worked my way through college as an usher/floor manager at the Tennessee Perform Arts Center (I saw Annie 16 times). While I worked there, I was the subject of a tirade from Yul Brenner regarding a door that had been left open and was letting his precious air conditioning out. Pearl Baily also kissed my cheek. I liked her much more.
17. Being the trusting southern boy I am, I once left my briefcase in my seat during intermission at Radio City Music Hall during a performance of the Russian Ballet while I went to get something to drink. This is when I used to live in Connecticut and would sometimes go into the city to meet friends. When I came back to my seat, there were four police officers surrounding my seat--convinced there was a bomb in my briefcase. Who would leave a briefcase unattended? I explained I was from Tennessee and that seemed to do the trick.
18. When I graduated from college, my mother gave me a trip to New York on a Clara Heironaymus Tennessean theater tour. My photo was on the front page of the paper with the cast of Pump Boys and Dinettes. I also got to see Jennifer Holliday in Dreamgirls. It was my first time on a plane and my first trip to New York.
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19. I once had lunch with Jane Fonda and a drink with Anthony Hopkins. But the nicest person I met then was the woman who played Phoebe on All My Children. Both of these were from my days in the video business. And this was the video business when you still had VHS and Beta.
20. I tell people my favorite movie is All About Eve. And while I really like it, my favorite really is Hairspray—the John Waters version—not the one John Travolta messed up.
21. When my father died, we had a closed casket. Someone said to me--"Well if we had known the casket was going to be closed, we wouldn't have come." That's where I got the idea for doing the book As a Gentleman Would Say. I also used that in my play Don’t Hydroplane.
22. The best book title/concept I have ever come up with is Blue Balls in a Red State--How to Pick Up Conservative Women. I haven’t had any luck selling it yet. Sometimes genius takes a while to sink in.
23. I am a very lucky man. I have a great family, great friends, and a career I still am passionate about most days.